Court in Sao Paulo postpones trial on prison massacre

AFP, SAO PAULO, Brazil

Wed, Apr 10, 2013 - Page 7

A Sao Paulo court on Monday adjourned until next week the trial of 26 military police officers linked to the killing of 111 inmates during Brazil’s deadliest prison uprising in 1992.

Judge Jose Augusto Nardy Marzagao ruled that the proceedings, which started two hours behind schedule with the selection of a seven-member jury, be postponed until Monday next week after a female juror fell ill.

The court said the trial would resume with the selection of a new seven-member jury.

The officers, most of them now retired, are specifically blamed for the deaths of 15 prisoners, who died in pavilion 9 of Sao Paulo’s Carandiru penitentiary during an operation to quell a revolt on Oct. 2, 1992. The incident became known as the “Carandiru massacre.”

“Clearly there was a massacre, an execution. The inmates were killed without an opportunity to defend themselves,” the G1 Web site quoted prosecution official Fernando Pereira da Silva as saying.

However, the defense argues that the police officers fired in self-defense after being threatened and assaulted by the prisoners.

All the officers involved in the operation were unharmed. In addition to the 111 prisoners killed, about 87 others were injured.

Survivors claimed that police fired on inmates who had already surrendered or were trying to hide in their cells.

Only the commanding officer of the operation, Colonel Ubiratan Guimaraes, was initially sentenced to 632 years in jail for his mishandling of the revolt and the subsequent killings.

However, in 2006, a Brazilian court voided the conviction because of mistrial claims. Later that year, Guimaraes was found dead in his apartment under unclear circumstances.

A total of 79 military police officers are to stand trial in various stages.

The massacre, in what was then Latin America’s biggest prison with 8,000 inmates, was chronicled in a 2003 film directed by Argentine-born Brazilian Hector Babenco.

It sparked outrage among the prison inmates and prosecutors said it was a key factor in the establishment of a criminal gang known as First Command of the Capital (PCC) in 1993.

The PCC is believed to have ordered the death of the director of the prison at the time, Jose Ismael Pedrosa.

From the prison, PCC bosses coordinated a series of assaults on police stations and public buildings, which left more than 170 people dead and paralyzed Sao Paulo for four days in May 2006, before spreading to other Brazilian cities.

Scores of civilians suspected of criminal backgrounds were gunned down in a subsequent wave of police reprisal attacks.

Late last year, the PCC was also blamed for a wave of police killings and bus burnings.